Past experience helps Dave Bosher guide SnagAjob.com

Dave Bosher has overseen the finances of global, publicly traded corporations and small startups in emerging and niche markets. The result is always the same: unprecedented but sustainable growth.

At SnagAJob.com, for example, where he is CFO and a board member, Bosher has put in place a successful funding strategy and the internal systems and processes necessary to support high growth, enabling the company to get a stranglehold on the online hourly and part-time recruiting market. Small companies under Bosher’s financial direction, says Greg Moyer, senior vice president of SnagAJob.com, “don’t stay small for long.”

Since Bosher arrived in 2006, SnagAJob.com has tripled its revenues. “To help a young company do that is really fun stuff,” says Bosher, 55, who says that the smaller, less formal environment of a startup also gives him more opportunity to partner and collaborate with the CEO. “I really enjoy that.”

Before his latest post, Bosher helped Payerpath Inc., a medical claims reporting and processing company in Richmond, expand 14-fold in just four years by leading three rounds of venture capital, establishing bank credit and lease lines and building the finance teams that could support such rapid growth. In the 1990s, he was CFO at Cadmus Communications Corp., where he participated in sophisticated financing deals and more than 15 acquisitions and that helped boost corporate revenues from $100 million to $500 million.

The key to Bosher’s success is that he takes an interest in all aspects of a business and is adept at translating overall company strategy into financial objectives. He is also more than willing to collaborate, and as a result, is known as someone that his colleagues can trust. “I work really hard to become friends with the other managers so that I am their partner,” he says, noting that he even helps salespeople work on deals and understand which ones pose the best chance for making money over the long term. “I’m not just the CFO that has to be dealt with but a CFO that they want to have helping them.”

Bosher remains attuned to upcoming challenges. The biggest one at SnagAJob.com — which took in $10.7 million in 2007 and continues to grow at a 10 percent month over month rate — is balancing expansion with capital and bandwidth constraints. “There are seemingly millions of opportunities available to us, but the difficulty comes with figuring out which ones will really move the company forward and then staying focused on those and not getting sidetracked,” he says.

The CFO’s key role in managing that challenge is to make sure that the business and financial models are constantly tuned and communicated throughout the company. “We’re very open about our projections with all of our managers,” Bosher explains. “That way, they understand that the reason we may not do a certain project is not because it doesn’t have merit but because it’s not consistent with what our strategy is or because we don’t have the operating or financial bandwidth to do it right now.”